It is such a large thing, shoreline
like a tense muscle, that he cannot concentrate on this
small bit here. He knows how steadily it moves,
curled and splayed into milky flats beyond this surf,
its dizzy swell offensive. He trusts rigid
things better: walls, cars, structures that do not reach out in random
longing.

No one behind him sees what is here:
driftwood and water shrugging away, a relentless much
of nothing. He knows here in the shallows riptides scoop the shore clean,
but out there solidity gyres down into a forgotten
black.

He hates the sea not because it collects
but because it never suffers. What has the ocean given up? It eats up coastline, steals away
delta silt and only offers up those bits we
don't want back: whale bones and shells, cold remnants
of living.

He knows a hand reached out for him, but he cannot remember what his
boy was wearing.